Pakistan: Christian and Hindu girls are kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam

Young women are forced into Muslim marriages with the complicity of the police and the judiciary. The government refuses to approve a law on “forced conversions”

A young Christian girl in Pakistan.

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Pubblicato il
23/01/2016

Ultima modifica il 23/01/2016 alle ore 19:33

paolo affatato

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Her name is Saima Bibi, she is 15 years old and a Christian. She was taken away from her family by force, obliged to sign a faith conversion agreement and marry a Muslim man called Tanvir. She lived a tranquil life in a village named Chack 59 (small settlements in Pakistan are simply given a number, Ed.), in the district of Kasur, in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

It was in this very same village on 14 November 2014, that the two Christian spouses, Shama and Shahzad Masih were thrown into a furnace by a crowd of Muslims and burn alive after being accused of blasphemy. The incident is still causing an uproar because it is remains unpunished.

15-year-old Saima was alone at home when she was kidnapped. The parents reported the kidnapping and Sardar Mushtaq Gill, a Christian lawyer is providing them free legal assistance. According to Gill “this case is typical. The victims are often women belonging to religious minorities, Hindu and Christian women”. These are abductions with the aggravating factor of forced conversion and marriage, crimes which go unpunished: “There is currently no law on forced conversion,” the lawyer added but the government has no intention of doing anything about it.

According to figures provided by NGOs, around 1,000 girls from Christian and Hindu minorities are kidnapped in Pakistan every year. Many other cases are not even reported because the police on the judiciary are often dishonest and complicit in such crimes and discourage minorities from taking legal action.

The intrinsic vulnerability of minority religious communities (Hindus in Pakistan make up approximately 2% of the population, Christians 1,5%) which are exposed to abuse and discrimination tops it all off. Injustice lingers and is set in stone, almost institutionalised.

For quite some time now, civil society organisations have been pointing out the scale of this phenomenon which stretches to underage girls. Last November, Sana John, a 13-year-old Christian girl was kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam in an area near Sialkot. Pakistani NGO Life for All is helping her in light of the police’s inaction after the incident was reported.

Life for All explained: “Influential people use their power to get away with things. Cases involving kidnapped minors are common knowledge but the courts and authorities dealing with them turn a blind eye. How much longer will this injustice be tolerated for?”

All this is part of a framework of female subservience in Pakistani society, particularly in rural areas. But women who belong to religious minorities are doubly vulnerable. Speaking to Vatican Insider, Mr. Gill said that “in cases such as this, the family of the victim reports the incidents. The kidnappers contest it, claiming the young girl made the choice of her own free will. When the girl is eventually called to give evidence before a judge, having received threats and having been placed under unspeakable pressure, she declares that she willingly converted and agreed to marriage. And so the case is closed.”

“Victims are sexually abused, forced into prostitution, they suffer domestic abuse or even wind up in the human trafficking cycle. Such cases rarely end in the girls going back to their real families,” the lawyer pointed out.

“Serious investigations need to be carried out, to prove that this phenomenon exists and the mechanism behind it,” says a report published by the Aurat Foundation, an independent organisation based in Islamabad, that works to promote the values of freedom and democracy. One crucial fact is this: “from the moment the controversy begins, right up until the court hearing, the girls live with their kidnappers and suffer traumas and violence”.

These fragile and vulnerable teens are told that they “are now Muslims and that the punishment for apostasy is death”. The Foundation’s report urges the police and civil authorities to bring this practice to light and save girls belonging to religious minorities.

The Aurat Foundation has also proposed a bill to put an end to forced conversions. Similar action was taken by Pakistan’s National Commission for Minorities in 2012 – in light of similar incidents that sparked a nationwide scandal – which came up with a bill specifically aimed at countering the phenomenon of conversion and forced marriage.

But the government is turning a deaf ear. In November 2015, the Pakistani Ministry of religious Affairs and the Council of Islamic Ideology publicly and proudly opposed a potential law on “forced conversion”, sparking dismay and protests among Hindus and Christians.